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I met Lauren Bacall once when I was working at Liberty & Co Ltd in Great Marlborough Street, London. It was in the early days of book signings before they became ten-a-penny and she came in to sign her autobiography for customers. The atmosphere before arrival was rather like that of receiving royalty, in this case Princess Margaret because a large bucket of ice, a full bottle of gin and sliced lemon were made available off-stage in the Picture Department office, next to the Record Department where I worked.
The Diva arrived and was ushered into this office and did not appear again for a good twenty minutes,which delay led to a mounting excitement around the signing table. When she finally emerged there was a n audible but reverent gasp of delight and astonishment. She was quite tall, her hair was magnificently wavy and shiny, the gin had clearly worked its magic and she was ready to go to meet her public
I had to carry on working so I didn't see much more of her but when I did sneak out to get a copy for a friend (at staff discount - this was long before Amazon!!) she was standing up having a fag break (this was the late 1970s!) and my lasting impression was the size of her feet! They were huge! The things you notice
Her book is worth reading too., an interesting life on and off-screen, she told it as it was.
This is sad news. She was a lovely, funny and brilliant woman as well as a terrific actress. I was fortunate to see her on Broadway in "Woman of the Year" - a Kander and Ebb show in which she was stunning as the lead.
At 89, it was bound to happen one day, but it's still very sad. RIP Lauren Bacall.
To Bogie in "The Big Sleep": "So you do get up. I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust."
To those of us intoxicated with feminism's heady first wave in the 1970s (and many of us were as confused as we were excited) she showed another way of being a woman. You didn't necessarily need the boiler suit...
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